Seeing that brief puddle, though, gave me an idea. "She'll have more water in there, won't she?" I asked Myakes.
"I expect so, Emperor," he answered. After a brief hesitation, he asked, "Are you thirsty? There will be wineshops for that."
I was not thirsty. I had no doubt he knew I was not thirsty. He was trying to protect me from myself, always a losing battle. I went into the washerwoman's shop. She looked up from the tunics she was wringing out. Her mouth twisted. Then, of a sudden, her faced cleared, or nearly cleared. "You're him, aren't you?" she asked in strangely accented Greek. "Justinian, I mean."
"Yes, I am Justinian." Till that moment, I had never had to humble myself before anyone but my father, and found the experience both strange and unpleasant. Nevertheless, I persisted. Pointing to a wooden hogshead, I asked, "Is there water in that barrel?"
"There is water," she agreed. Then she went on as Myakes had: "Are you thirsty? I will get you a cup."
"No, I am not thirsty," I said. "I want to see myself. May I look?"
She hesitated. Her lip curled again, which should have told me everything I needed to know. But I had been polite. Though she looked troubled, she nodded to me. Nodding my thanks in return, I went over to the hogshead and peered down into it.
In the grand palace in Constantinople, I had a mirror of polished silver as tall as I was, in which I could examine my magnificence when decked out in the imperial regalia. A handsome man had always stared back at me from that gleaming surface. My regalia now consisted of a dirty wool tunic. I had been disfigured. The water in that miserable old barrel seemed an appropriate instrument in which to view myself.
It was dim inside the shop, and dimmer within the hogshead. For a moment, I thought I would see nothing. Then, my eyes having adapted to the gloom, I wished nothing was what I had continued to see.
Everyone knows the seeming of a man new-recovered from illness that all but took his life: the sunken eyes, the skin stretched tight across cheekbones, the expression that says- and says truthfully- he has won a battle against a foe as deadly as any who roars on the battlefield, sword and bow to hand. All that I expected; all that I found. In my imagination, I had subtracted from my appearance most of my nose- or, at least, I had thought I had done so.
I have many times been reminded imagination and reality are not identical, but never more forcibly than on that quiet morning in that humid little shop. In my imagination, the wound was neat and precise, with pink flesh appearing under where my nose had been. In fact, my face took on the aspect of a skull, with a large, dark opening in the center. The presence of my eyes above it could not overcome the horrific, skeletal impression I created even on myself.
Sickened, I turned away from the hogshead, for the first time understanding in my belly why ancient custom forbids the imperial throne to a mutilated man. Who, I wondered, could bring himself to obey the commands of an Emperor whom good fortune had so conspicuously abandoned? What disasters would the reign of such a one bring down onto the Roman Empire?
Turning toward Myakes, I saw he had long ago grasped what I was realizing only now. "You see, Emperor?" he said, meaning the word in its most literal sense.
"Yes, I see," I answered, and, for a moment, despair threatened to overwhelm me. "I see," I repeated heavily, and, after thanking the washerwoman for what she imagined to be her kindness, I spoke again to Myakes, in listless tones: "Let's go."
"Aye, Emperor," he said, compliant as always.
And by that unquestioning compliance he saved me. I strode out of the washerwoman's shop into the warm, bright sunshine. Myakes followed without hesitation. He need not have followed. He need not have accompanied me to Kherson at all, or nursed me when fever from my wounds nearly took my life. Better for him had he stayed behind in Constantinople.
But he had followed and cared for me. He followed still. If he followed me, mutilated as I was, others would follow as well. The logic was as inexorable as any the pedagogue whose name I have long since forgotten tried to inculcate in me, as inexorable as the logic demonstrating the hypostatic union of the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
"I will be Emperor again," I murmured, and then, "I shall be Emperor again," which partook of more of the flavor of inevitability building in my mind.
Myakes said nothing. I daresay he thought I was mad. But if he thought me mad, why did he still call me Emperor? Humoring a madman, perhaps? Perhaps. But why would he have gone on serving a madman? As exile, I had no claim on him; he could have done better for himself had he abandoned me. To the bottom of my soul, I believe something in him still sensed the power of the imperial dignity clinging to me even in Kherson, as the scent of perfume clings to a woman long after she sets aside the jar from which it has come.
I did not traverse Kherson end to end, not that first day. The smell of fish frying in hot oil wafting out of a tavern near the washerwoman's shop made my stomach growl like a bear. I pointed to the tavern, saying, "Let's get some of that. It will be better than the salt fish they'll give us back at the monastery." I had already had plenty of that.
Myakes looked down at the ground. "How do you propose paying for it, Emperor? At the monastery, they don't ask for money- or they haven't yet, anyhow. If we stay there much longer and Leontios doesn't send any, they will, I expect."
Was I more astonished than I should have been? Maybe I was, but in all my life I had never once had to pay for food, and the idea that I might need to do so now had never entered my mind. Almost as much as the glimpse of my appearance, it brought home to me the brute reality that, in the eyes of the world, I was Emperor of the Romans no more. Well, the world was and is an ignorant place, and I have had occasion to teach it more than one lesson.
Nor had I ever had to worry about money for myself before: for the Roman Empire, yes, but not for myself. I had had everything. I now had nothing. Realizing to the fullest how far I had fallen was dizzying. I found myself swaying on my feet. This, I judge, was also due in no small measure to my remaining bodily weakness. Having recovered from that in part, I had imagined it completely overcome, and now discovered I was in error.
"Let's head back," Myakes said, seeing both my discomfiture and my weakness. And, indeed, he took my arm and bore some of my weight when I faltered. The salty stew was waiting for us when we arrived. I ate of it, then crawled under my blanket and slept like a little child after a hard day's play.
When I woke, I was stronger.
One day not long after that, Myakes said to me, "I expect you'll be all right here for a spell, Emperor. I'm going up into the town."
"What are you going to do there?" I asked.
"Look for work on the docks," he answered. "We'll both be better off if we have a bit of cash jingling in our pouches." He slapped the one he wore on the belt round his tunic. Nothing jingled there, it being empty.
"But-" I began. I can name no rational reason for the pained embarrassment I felt. Myakes had been serving me since I was hardly higher than his knee. He had risked his life more than once on my behalf. Why his proposing to labor so that I might have money so affected me, I cannot say. That it did, I cannot deny.
Myakes, however, would hear none of my inchoate protest. "Got to be done," he said cheerfully. "I've been a farmer and I've been a soldier. After those, dockwalloper won't be so much of a much."
He poured down the wine the monks had given us with our morning porridge- salt-fish porridge, of course- and went out, whistling a dirty song whose tune our pious hosts fortunately did not recognize. That left me with nothing whatever to do and with no one with whom to talk, the monks being occupied after breakfast with their own concerns.